


Houseguest

by Josselin



Category: American Idol RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad was at the bottom of his list of people to call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Houseguest

Brad was at the bottom of his list of people to call. Brad lived in the right area, and Cassidy was closer to Brad than to some of the people he'd already called begging for a place to crash. But there was no way that him and Brad in the confined space of Brad and Parker's place was going to be any good. Cassidy might make it on the couch for a night or two, but eventually he'd end up in Brad's room, and neither of them had the willpower to forgo having sex with each other in that sort of situation, faced with temptation lying next to you every night. And if they had sex enough it'd become a relationship, and that would be ugly. Cassidy was already doing ugly, which was why he was desperately looking for a place to crash at for a few weeks.

So Brad had been at the bottom of the list, but he reached the bottom of the list and was still homeless so he called Brad anyway.

He could feel Brad thinking all the same things he'd already thought through himself, about how awful an idea this was.

"Oh, honey," Brad said finally.

Cassidy had known that this was a bad idea, but he hadn't actually thought Brad might say no, so he was starting to feel desperate. "Look, it's just for a few weeks," he promised. "I'll find another place, I just can't do it today, and--"

"You know it's a terrible idea," Brad told him.

Cassidy sighed. "I know," he said. "I know, but I already talked with--" he listed off other of their mutual friends that he'd begged earlier that morning. "I'm really desperate, Brad," he said, and then he held his breath.

He could hear Brad sigh on the other end of the line, and that seemed like a hopeful sign he was about to give in, but then he said, "There is one person who totally owes you and has like 8 billion spare rooms that you haven't called."

It took Cassidy a second to even get it. "I didn't think of calling him," he admitted. "Is he even around?"

"Does it matter?" Brad said. "His house is here, that's what you're after."

It seemed weird, somehow, like he was trying to be a starfucker or whatever, but weird might trump terrible, so Cassidy relented. "Yeah, you're right, that's a good idea, I'll call him."

Something in Brad's voice softened now that Cassidy wasn't dangling a disastrous friendship-ending affair in front of his face. "You have his real number?" Brad asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Cassidy said, thinking back. "I mean, back when we were talking about the photo shoot, when I called I always got him directly."

Brad rattled off the number by heart for Cassidy to check it, and then he thanked Brad again for the idea, Brad promised to take him out to console him regarding his terrible circumstances once he was no longer homeless, and Cassidy ended the call.

He dialed Adam quickly before he had the chance to lose his nerve, and when he hit Adam's voicemail he left a nervous message. "Hey, it's Cass. You remember that time I let you crash on my couch for two weeks? I'm kind of hoping you can return the favor--I'm having kind of a shitty time and I need a place to stay while I find a new place. Uh, call me."

He tried to work for a few hours without checking his phone more than once every five minutes, but Adam called him back before lunch, sounding happy and somewhat distracted.

Cassidy tried to summarize his situation without having to get into the entire epic tragedy that his life had devolved into, and concluded by repeating his request for a favor.

"Yes, yes, of course," Adam told him, and apparently he'd already called the security people for his gated neighborhood and instructed them to let Cassidy into his house, and his assistant was overnighting Cassidy a real set of keys.

This was why Cassidy hadn't thought of Adam in the first place, because things with Adam were just, weird now. None of his other friends had personal assistants, for one thing. Adam gave Cassidy the phone number of his, just in case he had questions about the house.

But he managed to get past security at the gate and they let him into the house, and then he was finally, blissfully alone for the first time in like three days. The exhaustion finally hit him and he didn't even make it upstairs but fell asleep on Adam's couch.

Cassidy woke up the next morning to a call from the gate on the alarm system, and he almost had to call Adam's PA to figure out how to work the intercom on the alarm panel. The gate was calling because a messenger had arrived that needed a signature, and Cassidy wondered what to do for a long moment before realizing it was probably the house keys Adam had said he was sending, and he told security to go ahead and let the messenger in. He signed for the package at the door and opened it to find a generic set of keys on a ring, a scan card with a post-it on it saying, "For the gate" and a note in Adam's handwriting saying, "Hope things get better soon! xo A".

He spent the morning picking up a few boxes of his stuff that Blaise had managed to rescue and stashing them in one of Adam's empty guest rooms, and then he had to work, and it was Mustache Mondays that night, and he ended up so wasted that when he woke up in the middle of the night he wasn't actually sure where he was. He was on the floor, and he had some sort of throw cushion as a pillow, and he seemed to be alone.

He was probably still drunk, which explained why he decided to use his phone to post maudlin statuses on twitter rather than figure out where he was.

After a minute or so, Brad emerged from another room with his own phone glowing in his hand, and came over and sat next to Cassidy on the floor. He took Cassidy's phone from his hand. "What are you doing?" he asked, and his tone was gentler than it might have been.

Cassidy blinked at him in the darkness. "Everyone hates me," he told Brad.

Brad sighed, and shifted around so that he was sitting on Cassidy's throw cushion and Cassidy's head was in his lap. Cassidy felt momentarily nauseous at the movement, but his stomach settled after a moment and Brad's hand felt good running through his hair. "Shh," Brad said. "You're drunk."

"I'm a terrible person," he told Brad. "I just, I tried so hard, but--" Brad cut him off with a finger on his lips.

"You're an amazing person," Brad told him firmly. "And you're going through a hard time, but you'll get through it."

"The only people who like me are crazy girls on the internet," Cassidy continued.

"Fortunately, there's no shortage of those," Brad gave him a small smile, and in the darkness, lit by the glow of Cassidy's phone and the light from the street coming through some distant window, he looked gorgeous. Cassidy was going to tell him so, but he was distracted by feeling sick again.

"I think I'm gonna throw up," he said, instead, and Brad was still gorgeous in the harsh fluorescent light of the bathroom, but Cassidy didn't tell him that, either.

By Wednesday, Cassidy was feeling improved enough to start to resolve that he was going to turn things around. He figured out Adam's complicated coffee machine, and after working through email for an hour, he started to wonder whether Adam had any workout equipment. He figured he had to, with how he'd been looking recently, but it still felt sort of odd to be wandering around in Adam's house alone, like he was being rude by opening more doors or cabinets than he absolutely had to.

He swallowed the awkwardness, though, and found a treadmill and Adam's old TV in the finished basement, and set himself a rigorous pace for an hour. It was almost as though he could feel the toxins sweating out through his skin, and after he showered he could almost bear to look at himself in the mirror. The bruising on his face had already faded from red to more of a blue with green on the edges, and he thought about covering it up with makeup and then he decided to own it, and snapped a picture in the mirror with his phone and posted it. The internet would probably think it was hot, or that he was a self-obsessed dick who deserved it, but whatever. He was over it. He heated up some antioxidant tea and stared at his voicemail. It was hard to figure out which messages might be work related and which were personal condolences as the news of his tragedy spread across WeHo, so after a moment of biting his lip he just deleted all of them without listening to any.

He was staring so hard at the phone after deleting his messages that he almost dropped the phone when it started to buzz. Adam was calling him, so Cassidy felt he had to pick up.

"Hey," Cassidy said. His voice sounded rough.

"Hey!" Adam said. "Hey, I heard more of--that's so terrible, Cass."

"Uh, thanks," he said. "I'm trying not to think about it right now, to be honest."

Adam made a considering noise. "That's okay for now," he pronounced finally, "but no going into denial or anything crazy, all right?"

"Deal," Cassidy said, taking a sip of his tea.

"I wanted to check on how you were doing at the house. Were you able to find everything?" Adam blathered on for a few minutes, talking about his linen closets and the cleaning woman named Marta and how there was an extra space in the garage Cassidy could use if he cleared out a few of the boxes Adam had in there.

"Look, thanks for this," Cassidy broke in, finally. "I, seriously, I really appreciate it, and I know this must seem kind of weird, but, you're like, my savior."

"Don't worry about it," Adam said easily.

"I just," Cassidy felt like he wasn't really getting at the point here, which was that he really wasn't trying to take advantage of Adam, and somehow it was harder to ask Adam for a favor now that he was actually in a position to grant it. "I just don't want you to think I'm not grateful," Cassidy said finally. "Seriously, I might have ended up homeless or--Leilee said I could crash in her laundry room."

Adam laughed musically.

"Seriously!" Cassidy said.

"I'm serious too," Adam said. "Don't worry about it. And I'm, uh, sorry in advance if the paps catch you and decide we're dating."

"So much better than Leilee's laundry room," Cassidy told him.

"Doesn't Leilee keep her cats' litterbox in the laundry room?" Adam asked, laughing again, and then he was distracted, suddenly, saying something to someone else and telling Cassidy that he had to go.

Cassidy still spent much of the time feeling like he was on the verge of coming apart, but he was so busy that time was flying past, and it was Saturday before he knew it. He went out with Brad again that weekend. Brad was between boyfriends at the moment and engaged in some sort of elaborate plan that involved taunting his twitter followers with clues all week and then leading them on a scavenger hunt across the city on Saturday night. Cassidy wasn't sure if the ultimate point was for some of them to actually find him, or if it was just some sort of publicity ploy, but Brad's plans didn't always make sense to him. He didn't worry about it overly much.

He tried not to worry about anything, so at the end of the evening, when Das poured him and Brad into a cab and told them to get lost before Brad got mauled again, Cassidy just slumped against Brad's shoulder and giggled helplessly while Brad gave the cabbie Adam's address.

The cabbie raised an eyebrow back at them. "That's a gated neighborhood," he said. "You can't go in."

"Fuck you, we so can," Cassidy drawled, while Brad just stared the cabbie down.

Finally the cabbie shrugged. "Whatever."

The cabbie raised his eyebrow at them again when they got to the gate, but Brad fished around in Cassidy's pockets for his wallet and managed to produce the security card that let them in, and Cassidy gave the cabbie the finger as he drove away, leaving Cassidy lilting slightly on Adam's driveway with Brad standing next to him.

Brad held up the gate card. "Does this let us in to the house, too, or do I have to dig through your pockets again?"

Cassidy pursed his lips and gave Brad what he thought was a sexy look, though Brad just rolled his eyes at him. "Pockets!" he said, and helpfully rolled his hips forward to let Brad dig through his pockets again, taking out his phone and his wallet before coming up with the house key.

"I'm soooooo drunk," Cassidy said happily, following Brad into the house. Brad was not as drunk as he was, though, and was not having enough fun. There was clearly one solution to that. "Let's make mohitos!" he suggested.

"Maybe you should cut back," Brad told him, walking up the back stairs. Cassidy trailed after him.

"Mohiiiitos," he sounded out to himself, tripping on one of the steps and barely catching himself on the landing, clutching the railing. "Mohitos, Bradley," he said.

"You're going to fall down the stairs and kill yourself," Brad told him, sounding pissy. "And not that that will be a huge loss, you lush, but it will be inconvenient for Adam."

Cassidy heaved a sigh. "Why're you being so mean?" he asked Brad as they reached the top of the stairs.

"What room are you staying in?" Brad asked him. "I need to wash my face."

Cassidy pointed down the hall, but Brad disappeared in the bathroom. Cassidy didn't make it much further down the hallway while Brad was washing his face, but he did manage to take his shirt off. Brad reemerged from the bathroom and they walked together to Cassidy's room.

Brad squawked when he opened the door. "You don't even have a bed!"

"Hello, it got kind of singed in the fire," Cassidy said.

"I know, I mean--don't any of Adam's guest rooms have furniture?" Brad complained.

Cassidy shook his head sadly.

Brad rolled his eyes again; he did that so much he was going to get a headache. "I guess what comes of breaking up with your decorator," he commented, going over to the other guest room and ascertaining that there was not, in fact, a bed hiding in there either. He even checked in the walk-in closet, though presumably that was out of general curiosity about Adam's stuff and not because he thought there was a bed hiding there.

"Fuck this," Brad announced while Cassidy was taking his socks off, and as Brad went off down the hall to Adam's room, Cassidy padded barefoot after him.

Cassidy had spent the whole week and a half he'd been staying in Adam's house trying not to intrude on Adam's things or take up too much space or mess anything up, but Brad just marched into Adam's room as though he belonged there.

Cassidy leaned nervously on the door frame. "I don't know if this is a good idea," he said, biting his lower lip.

"Suit yourself," Brad told him, peeling out of his pants. Cassidy watched appreciatively until Brad caught him staring in one of Adam's giant floor-length mirrors.

Cassidy heaved a sigh and pushed himself off of a the door frame and removed his own pants. Brad had claimed the side of the bed nearest to the door and the nightstand, so Cassidy crawled over him toward the side nearer to the window and squirmed under the covers. Adam had nice pillows, Cassidy discovered.

"Adam has nice pillows," Cassidy told Brad.

"Shut up or I might smother you with one," Brad returned.

"You're so mean," Cassidy complained again, and Brad actually covered Cassidy's mouth with his hand, and Cassidy was tempted to lick it, and he resisted for a minute and then he couldn't resist any longer and he did lick it, but Brad refused to react or take his hand away, so of course that got boring after a moment. He was drunk enough that once he started to lie still, it became hard to keep his eyelids open for very long, and he would feel like he was blinking very slowly and then realize that his eyes were closed, and then he was asleep.

Cassidy awoke to screaming. Really loud screaming. Brad was shrieking and Brad was right in his ear, and someone else was shouting, too, and it was loud and he thought his head might explode, especially when he thought about sitting up. He opened his eyes, and then someone turned on the lights, and Cassidy squeezed his eyes shut again.

Adam had apparently arrived in the early morning hours, wandered into his bedroom without turning on the lights, and collapsed onto his bed. This meant he landed directly on top of Brad, who awoke screaming about how he was being attacked, and Adam was startled enough to find someone in his bed that he joined in the screaming, and then Adam turned the bedside light on.

Cassidy opened his eyes again. "Oh, shit," he moaned miserably. Brad was glaring at Adam. Adam was glaring back, but the corners of his mouth were twitching and he was starting to smile.

"You squished me!" Brad told Adam.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry about this," Cassidy began apologizing, also to Adam.

"What are you even doing here?" Brad asked him.

"Me?!" Adam objected. "This is my bed!"

Brad apparently had no answer to that, and he crawled out of the bed and stalked into Adam's bathroom.

"I'm so, so sorry," Cassidy said again. "I've been staying in the other room, I swear, but last night I was drunk, and Brad was drunk, and--"

"Are you naked?" Adam interrupted him.

"Uh," Cassidy had to consider the question for a moment. "No."

"Okay," Adam answered, and crawled into the bed in the spot Brad had vacated. "God, I am so tired," he said.

Cassidy could sympathize, actually, he was kind of hoping that if he slept for ten more years that his headache might fade.

Brad returned from the bathroom and stood next to the bed with his hands on his hips. "Shove over," he told Adam. Cassidy was afraid this might signal the return of the screaming, but Adam scooted closer to Cassidy agreeably and Brad crawled in next to him. "I'm using this pillow," Brad told Adam, taking it, and Adam snorted and took one of the pillows that had ended up squished up at the head of the bed and allowed Brad to have the other one. Brad turned off the bedside lamp again.

"Night," Adam whispered.

"I think it's actually morning," Cassidy was going to say, but he was asleep before he managed to get it all out.


End file.
